The Ways Women Age: Using and Refusing Cosmetic Intervention

by Abigail T. Brooks

Overview

The story of how and why some women choose to use, while others refuse, cosmetic intervention.

What is it like to be a woman growing older in a culture where you cannot go to the doctor, open a magazine, watch television, or surf the internet without encountering products and procedures that are designed to make you look younger? What do women have to say about their decision to embrace cosmetic anti-aging procedures? And, alternatively, how do women come to decide to grow older without them? In the United States today, women are the overwhelming consumers of cosmetic anti-aging surgeries and technologies. And while not all women undergo these procedures, their exposure to them is almost inevitable.

Set against the backdrop of commercialized medicine in the United States, Abigail T. Brooks investigates the anti-aging craze from the perspective of women themselves, examining the rapidly changing cultural attitudes, pressures, and expectations of female aging. Drawn from in-depth interviews with women in the United States who choose, and refuse, to have cosmetic anti-aging procedures, The Ways Women Age provides a fresh understanding of how today’s women feel about aging.

The women’s stories in this book are personal biographies that explore identity and body image and are reflexively shaped by beauty standards, expectations of femininity, and an increasingly normalized climate of cosmetic anti-aging intervention. The Ways Women Age offers a critical perspective on how women respond to 21st century expectations of youth and beauty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814724057
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Abigail T. Brooks is Director of the Women’s Studies Program and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Providence College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Preface xi

Introduction: Older Women in Cosmetic Culture 1

1 "I Wanted to Look Like Me Again": Aging, Identity, and Cosmetic Intervention 29

2 "I Am What I Am!": The Freedom of Growing Older "Naturally" 69

3 "Age Changes You, but Not Like Surgery": Refusing Cosmetic Intervention 96

4 "Can We Just Stop the Clock Here?": Promise and Peril in the Anti-Aging Explosion 119

5 "Why Should I Be the Ugly One?": Social Circles of Intervention 140

6 "It's Not in My World": Living as a Natural Ager 177

Conclusion: Taking the Body Back 195

Epilogue 219

Appendix A Research Methods 223

Appendix B Interview Subjects 233

Notes 239

Index 267

About the Author 279

Editorial Reviews

"A must-read glimpse into a uniquely contemporary aspect of ageism."

Choice

"Abigail Brooks draws out rich nuanced voices on issues women of all ages care about, and is sensitive to a host of different perspectives. She remains balanced and neutral throughout the book, but she ably shows that the women who undergo anti-aging procedures end up pathologizing aging bodies and reinforcing the invisibility older women face in an ageist society. Thus, Brooks argues, the dynamics of ageism are only heightened by our surgical world. Readable, timely, and important."

Meika Loe

"This book identifies one of the most significant, but mostly ignored, changes in womens lives in the 21st Century: the re-definition of anti-aging technology, including surgery, as normal maintenance of the female body. Brooks manages to sympathetically portray women who choose to modify their aging bodies and those who choose to age naturally, but she also maintains a critical analysis of a sexist culture that devalues women as soon as they are no longer a feast for the male gaze. This is a book just as much for your female friends as for social scientists, an important read for us all."

Barbara Risman

"Abigail Brooks draws out rich nuanced voices on issues women of all ages care about, and is sensitive to a host of different perspectives. She remains balanced and neutral throughout the book, but she ably shows that the women who undergo anti-aging procedures end up pathologizing aging bodies and reinforcing the invisibility older women face in an ageist society. Thus, Brooks argues, the dynamics of ageism are only heightened by our surgical world. Readable, timely, and important."-Meika Loe,author of Aging Our Way

"This book identifies one of the most significant, but mostly ignored, change in women’s lives in the 21st Century: the re-definition of anti-aging technology, including surgery, as normal maintenance of the female body. Brooks manages to sympathetically portray women who choose to modify their aging bodies and those who choose to age naturally, but she also maintains a critical analysis of a sexist culture that devalues women as soon as they are no longer a feast for the male gaze. This is a book just as much for your female friends as for social scientists, an important read for us all."-Barbara Risman,author of Families as They Really Are

From the Publisher